In 1997, two composers made "The Most Unwanted Song" by sending out a survey and putting together all the annoying lyrics and music that most people said they didn't like. The song has a harp with an accordion, out-of-tune children singing about Christmas and Walmart, lots of high-pitched flutes with tubas and keyboard demos, someone yelling random political terms through a megaphone, and an operatic soprano rapping over cowboy music, bagpipes, and screaming. It's 22 minutes long. (Apologies in advance)
posted to MetaFilter by Roverlaw at 12:54 PM on June 23, 2023 (44 comments)

Matt Daniels for the Pudding used Open Syllabus to explore what books from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s are being assigned in college-level classes. It’s a fascinating look at a new “turn-of-the-century literary canon” pulling out the top ten titles for each decade, both fiction and nonfiction.

How does a book become a present-day classic, enthusiastically assigned by educators? Among the things I considered were: was it heavily awarded? Did it have an outsized impact on culture? Does it pertain to a topic that the next generation should know?

posted to MetaFilter by Pachylad at 8:42 AM on May 7, 2023 (41 comments)

"Shy little frog singing along to this fun tune." The full song by @sushisingz and a reaction video for shy little frog TikTok additive video as new musicians join the original frog. #FrogTikTok hashtag has 1 billion views including over 6 million views for this frog getting a shower. TikTok also has terrible frog-related ideas too.
posted to MetaFilter by spamandkimchi at 12:32 PM on August 11, 2022 (5 comments)

Earlier this year, the People Make Games YouTube channel released an investigation (previously) into Roblox, detailing the shady methods (including literal child labor) that have, in part, made the company worth billions. Well, turns out there's more to report, so they're back with a new video, and it's even more disturbing than the first one.
posted to MetaFilter by jklaiho at 11:07 AM on December 13, 2021 (13 comments)

Tetris players recently discovered an unusual way to use the NES controller, which is leading to new records being set.
posted to MetaFilter by lazaruslong at 2:28 AM on December 5, 2021 (25 comments)

The negative effects of disinformation and misinformation around the globe have been clear and disturbing. In response, Stanford University's History Education Group has put together a free curriculum with lesson plans and assessments for teachers and professors. The Civic Online Reasoning curriculum is intended to teach students how to recognize misinformation and disinformation by employing techniques used by professional fact checkers. You have to register (free) to access the lesson plans and assessments, but the videos--hosted by YA author and Crash Course creator John Green--are also available as a YouTube playlist. The curriculum is based on peer-reviewed research and has been tested in real classrooms.
posted to MetaFilter by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:52 PM on September 2, 2021 (94 comments)

The greatest thing about every single town in New Jersey, a five-part series by NJ.com food and features writer Pete Genovese. Links to each individual installment below the fold.
posted to MetaFilter by May Kasahara at 7:13 AM on August 25, 2021 (58 comments)

The obesity epidemic is deeply weird. For example: lab animals are getting fatter, even if they're eating the same diet that animals were fed decades ago. People living at higher altitudes are significantly less prone to becoming overweight than people who reside at lower elevations.
posted to MetaFilter by alex1965 at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2021 (153 comments)

Combinators and the Story of Computation - "The idea of representing things in a formal, symbolic way has a long history... But was there perhaps some more general and fundamental infrastructure: some kind of abstract system that could ultimately model or represent anything? Today we understand that's what computation is. And it's becoming clear that the modern conception of computation is one of the single most powerful ideas in all of intellectual history—whose implications are only just beginning to unfold. But how did we finally get to it? Combinators had an important role to play, woven into a complex tapestry of ideas stretching across more than a century." (also btw The Nature of Computation previously)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 2:23 AM on June 20, 2021 (27 comments)

The University of Toronto's Sociology Department posts the reading lists for its PhD comprehensive exams. This is the list of books and articles that the faculty think are required for serious scholarship in these subfields; it's also a great place to look for syllabus ideas for courses in related fields. (h/t Raul Pacheco-Vega)
posted to MetaFilter by anotherpanacea at 6:22 AM on June 14, 2021 (16 comments)

Can you help me find resources for students on AI, machine learning, big data and the social implications of future computing?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by argybarg at 1:39 PM on January 3, 2021 (8 comments)

From the Adult Swim Festival 2020, a remarkable performance by saxophone player Colin Stetson, which includes two unreleased tracks, "The love it took to leave you" and "Strike your forge and grin."
posted to MetaFilter by yasaman at 1:59 PM on November 30, 2020 (27 comments)

Italian singer Adriano Celentano released a song in the 70s with nonsense lyrics meant to sound like American English, apparently to prove Italians would like any English song. It was a hit, and resulted in this: THE GREATEST VIDEO I HAVE EVER SEEN.
posted to MetaFilter by Ahmad Khani at 7:23 PM on November 27, 2020 (79 comments)

Rise of the Nazis [Ep. 1, 2, 3] - "In 1930 Germany was a liberal democracy. Just four years later democracy is dead, Germany's leader is a dictator and its government is in the hands of murderers. This series tells the story of how this happened. Leading historians and experts get inside the heads of some of the key players, whose political plotting, miscalculations and personal ambitions helped to destroy democracy and deliver control to Hitler." (via; BBC; previously)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 11:27 PM on November 27, 2020 (43 comments)

The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020) has died. She was a philosophical giant. You may know her from her landmark 1971 paper in defense of abortion or for one of her papers on the trolley problem. Or maybe you know the 1997 amicus brief on assisted suicide she co-authored with Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, Rawls, and Scanlon.
posted to MetaFilter by Jonathan Livengood at 8:21 AM on November 23, 2020 (17 comments)

Did you know you can use a browser window as a basic scratch pad/text editor with one simple command? Wait, you didn't? In that case, Serge Zaitsev shows you how.
posted to MetaFilter by carter at 11:35 AM on November 20, 2020 (29 comments)

Because of the ongoing vote counting in the US Elections which may take additional days to resolve, and the groaning size of the original US Election 2020 thread (excellent FPP here), this post is “Part Deux”. Let the MeFi servers and mobile devices everywhere rejoice!
posted to MetaFilter by darkstar at 12:09 PM on November 4, 2020 (1736 comments)

It's Election Day in United States. Some 95 million people have voted early. For people voting today or helping voters: the Election Protection Hotline is run by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and partner organizations and has staff available to help in several languages. If someone has a problem voting, call 866-OUR-VOTE.
posted to MetaFilter by LobsterMitten at 7:25 AM on November 3, 2020 (1830 comments)

TreeTV is a five-hour video from Adult Swim of footage of trees and mellow music.
Created adjacent to Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera.
“Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 10:47 PM on May 28, 2020 (3 comments)

Herd-Like Movement Of Fuzzy Green 'Glacier Mice' Baffles Scientists "'They really do look like little mammals, little mice or chipmunks or rats or something running around on the glacier, although they run in obviously very slow motion,' says wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert."
posted to MetaFilter by moonmilk at 7:24 AM on May 22, 2020 (18 comments)

A sublime 25 minutes of watching someone solve a Sudoku puzzle with some extra restrictions - starting with a grid containing just two numbers.
posted to MetaFilter by Stark at 1:34 PM on May 19, 2020 (36 comments)

I find myself increasingly obsessed with the rise of the so-called “COVID influencer” or armchair epidemiologist. These men — and they are, largely, men — are legitimate experts in other fields. They are lawyers, former reporters and thriller writers, Silicon Valley technologists, newspaper columnists, economists and doctors who specialize in different parts of medicine. Their utter belief in their own cognitive abilities gives them the false sense that their speculation, and predictive powers, are more informed than the rest of ours.
posted to MetaFilter by latkes at 9:07 AM on April 22, 2020 (157 comments)

Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound , a wildstyle symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it. Available now (only on digital platforms until the shutdown ends). Pitchfork have awarded the album their first 10/10 rating since Kanye West's 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' back in 2010. “Blast the music! Bang it! Bite it! Bruise it!”
posted to MetaFilter by Lanark at 2:12 AM on April 17, 2020 (69 comments)

Best Baby Music?

I'm actually thinking along two lines here. There's Baby Awake Music and then there's Baby Go to Sleep Music.

What are people's favorites? [MI]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fenriq at 10:46 AM on November 10, 2004 (25 comments)

mr. sandman
man me a sand
make him the cutest man car door hook hand
give him the sand that i'm not a hander
then tell him that his sands and mans are handses

A full and quite lovely vocal rendition of an old Tumblr shitpost.
posted to MetaFilter by Countess Elena at 5:49 PM on March 17, 2020 (25 comments)

@eerrriiicaa: "Please tell me your embarrassing sex stories so i feel better. I just thought about the time a few years ago when a guy went down on me and we made eye contact and I waved for some reason" and @RealFionaO replied "A fella I was riding said ‘Who is your daddy?’ And I said my Dad’s name ‘Eamonn’" and there were more...
posted to MetaFilter by Wordshore at 3:29 PM on March 11, 2020 (94 comments)

The evidence for evidence-based therapy is not as clear as we thought (Aeon): "Is the credibility of the evidence for ESTs [empirically supported treatments] as strong as that designation suggests? Or does the evidence-base for ESTs suffer from the same problems as published research in other areas of science?" Of the 70 ESTs listed by the Society of Clinical Psychology, researchers found that 20% performed well, 30% had mixed results, and 50% had subpar outcomes.
posted to MetaFilter by not_the_water at 8:44 AM on March 6, 2020 (6 comments)

An AI program has learned the storytelling and art style of the legendary "God of Manga" mangaka Osamu Tezuka to create a completely original manga. Using 65 volumes of Tezuka's classic works, such as Black Jack and Phoenix, as its training set, the AI generated the plots, character bios, and character designs for the eponymous "Paidon",the story of a homeless philosopher named Paidon that has turned his back on society to solve criminal cases with his robotic bird partner, Apollo, in 2030 era Tokyo. The manga, which was secondarily illustrated and polished for publication by human artists, was released today in Kodansha's weekly manga serial Morning with a sequel already in the works.
posted to MetaFilter by Young Kullervo at 10:43 AM on February 27, 2020 (13 comments)

Twitter user @premium__heart said "Close your eyes and imagine an apple. What do you see?" They also provided a link to a more-complex visualization experiment. Responses have been…interesting.
posted to MetaFilter by Johnny Wallflower at 5:51 AM on February 9, 2020 (123 comments)

A beginner’s guide to modern classical music
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 2:27 PM on January 28, 2020 (47 comments)

They’ve been linked to road rage, pathological gambling, and complicated acts of fraud. Some make us less neurotic, and others may even shape our social relationships. We’re all familiar with the mind-bending properties of psychedelic drugs – but it turns out ordinary medications can be just as potent. From paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the US) to antihistamines, statins, asthma medications and antidepressants, there’s emerging evidence that they can make us impulsive, angry, or restless, diminish our empathy for strangers, and even manipulate fundamental aspects of our personalities, such as how neurotic we are.

posted to MetaFilter by Lexica at 7:01 PM on January 11, 2020 (42 comments)

Our goal is to demystify AI - Are you wondering how AI might affect your job or your life? Do you want to learn more about what AI really means — and how it’s created? Do you want to understand how AI will develop and affect us in the coming years?
posted to MetaFilter by dobbs at 1:58 PM on December 20, 2019 (8 comments)

Is This a Game? was an unusual gaming exhibition that just wrapped up in Japan. It contained games and game-like experiences from a variety of designers, ranging from a fairly conventional party game, to a secret video, to experiences that take a year or longer, to a massive team-based tactical extravaganza. The question "What is a game, really?" was a central theme of the exhibition.
posted to MetaFilter by CrunchyFrog at 11:25 PM on December 16, 2019 (5 comments)

It's a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private-jet ride to Coachella.
posted to MetaFilter by storytam at 8:41 AM on December 13, 2019 (23 comments)

Combining Probability Forecasts: 60% and 60% Is 60%, but Likely and Likely Is Very Likely. "... imagine that you are purchasing a plane ticket for your next vacation and you check two websites, Kayak and Hopper, to see if they predict any future price changes. If both websites say that there is a 60% chance that prices will increase, you would typically average the two and also believe there is a 60% chance. However, if both sites say that it is “likely” that prices will increase, you would act as if you are “counting” each prediction as a positive signal, becoming more confident in your prediction and believing that a price increase is “very likely.” " Also: Verbal probabilities: Very likely to be somewhat more confusing than numbers.
posted to MetaFilter by storybored at 12:00 PM on December 12, 2019 (14 comments)

From 1969 to 1972, an extraordinary experiment played out in 12 psychiatric institutions across 5 US states. Eight healthy people — including David Rosenhan, a social psychologist at Stanford University in California, who ran the experiment — convinced psychiatrists that they needed to be committed to mental hospitals. The ensuing paper, published in Science in 1973 ^{(free access)}, opens with the words: “If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?” It claimed that the psychiatric establishment was unable to distinguish between the two. Rosenhan’s study had far-reaching and much-needed effects on psychiatric care in the United States and elsewhere. By the 1980s, most psychology textbooks were quoting it. However, Susannah Cahalan’s investigation of the social-psychology experiment in her book The Great Pretender finds inconsistencies that appear to indicate it was all an unelaborate fraud.
posted to MetaFilter by Blasdelb at 4:40 AM on December 12, 2019 (32 comments)

Kagen Sound (formerly Schaefer) is a full-time artist known for his complex secret opening boxes. His website. (Previously on Metafilter)
posted to MetaFilter by growabrain at 6:48 AM on December 5, 2019 (10 comments)

Just what does an Oxford Astrophysicist do? Let's listen to Dr. Becky:

When people find out I’m an astrophysicist - I often get asked: “So, what do you actually do all day?” The easiest way to answer that question is to show you. From data crunching, to seminars, to journal clubs, emails and chatting on the radio; this was my Thursday 14th November 2019.

posted to MetaFilter by zengargoyle at 1:59 PM on November 27, 2019 (14 comments)

The Cinema of Inadvertence, or Why I Like Bad Movies
posted to MetaFilter by Chrysostom at 6:41 PM on November 24, 2019 (25 comments)

Daniel Mallory Ortberg returns with this year’s instalment of his pop-gothic celeb-horror serial fic People’s Sexiest Man Alive. Emphasis on the alive. This year: underdog John Legend takes on Idris Elba. [previously, previously-er]
posted to MetaFilter by sixswitch at 10:34 AM on November 20, 2019 (4 comments)

Amphibians, such as frogs, typically prey on insects including ground beetles and their larvae. The Epomis larva has impressive double-hooked mandibles that look like they came right out of a horror movie. It waves them around along with its antennae until the movement attracts a hungry amphibian, which approaches quickly and tries to eat the larva. In a surprising turn of events, the larva is able to dodge the predator’s attack only to leap on the unsuspecting amphibian and sink its jaws into its flesh. These larvae begin by sucking blood from the wound and eventually consume the frog altogether.
posted to MetaFilter by sciatrix at 12:35 PM on November 1, 2019 (31 comments)

Still wondering why Game of Thrones was such a mess? David Benioff and D.B Weiss talked about the show at the ongoing Austin Film Festival and there were lots of WTFs.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis at 9:16 PM on October 27, 2019 (226 comments)

Japan's Best Boring Halloween Costumes [Kotaku] “...at this annual event in Japan, participants are trying to do something far simpler—boring, even. This event is called “Jimi Halloween” (地味ハロウィン), with jimi (地味) meaning “mundane,” “plain,” or “subdued.” [...] Here are some of the best mundane costumes: Someone who cannot get a seat at the food court in the mall. The costume of a person wearing black clothing that has played with a cat. This woman is dressed as a person who is taking a photo of a meal. The person who cleans the escalator’s handrail. Someone about to win Old Maid. This man is dressed as a right-handed person. A person who is drinking a hot beverage. This is a costume of a person who would get mistaken as store staff at an eyeglasses shop. A person who has just purchased an umbrella the moment it stops raining. A guy who can’t find where his seat is at the baseball stadium.”
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 8:25 AM on October 28, 2019 (69 comments)

The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics — and they are mostly clever fools — seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are... Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard.
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 10:12 AM on October 28, 2019 (54 comments)

In search of nonfiction that makes you go, "Huh. Never thought of it like that before.” Suggestions, please!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by xenization at 8:16 AM on October 1, 2019 (53 comments)

[Thoreau's] mother brought him sandwiches and Walden Pond was on her property. Twitter rages against Thoreau.
posted to MetaFilter by mecran01 at 7:48 PM on October 2, 2019 (106 comments)

"These feel like such dire times, times of violence and dislocation, schism, paranoia, and the earth-scorching politics of fear. Babies have iPads, the ice caps are melting, and your smart refrigerator is eavesdropping on your lovemaking (and, frankly, it’s not impressed).

It has all seemed to fall apart so quickly. Looking around, it’s hard not to wonder who or what is to blame. I think it might be me. No, hear me out...."
posted to MetaFilter by dnash at 2:22 PM on September 30, 2019 (34 comments)

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.
posted to MetaFilter by reductiondesign at 9:12 PM on August 24, 2019 (112 comments)

Sarah has a YouTube channel that may seem familiar to you.
Sarah's Beauty Routine
A haul video
A makeover
Sarah's daily routine
What's in my bag?
Bloopers

posted to MetaFilter by obtuser at 4:08 PM on July 1, 2019 (18 comments)

Women’s bodies, you realize, are the true classical tradition: for millions of years, on macro and molecular levels, we’ve done intergenerational labor of preservation, replication and loss that dwarfs scribes’ transmission of a few hundred texts. You never treated your flesh like a temple, those summer afternoons you drank life and mimosas to the fullest; never thought of chromosomal decay all those nights in smoky pubs or long-haul flights. But all that time, you’d been a secret library, tending and discarding ancient ciphers just in case one zygotic codex — like the Veronese manuscript that rebirthed Catullus — might someday burst forth, be fruitful, and multiply.

–Not Bringing Home a Baby by classicist Dr. Nandini Pandey.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 10:51 AM on August 14, 2019 (16 comments)